Stars Speak Out: Celebrity Voices on the 2024 Presidential Candidates
By Sophia Maddox | April 10, 2024
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon
Artists Equity, a production company established by actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, criticized former President Donald J. Trump for using audio from their movie Air in a campaign video that was uploaded online in early June 2023.
The video, which featured a monologue from the film playing next to photos and videos of Mr. Trump throughout his life, was shared on Truth Social.
This video was posted along with a request for donations, shortly after Mr. Trump was formally charged with federal offenses. The charges against him include unlawfully retaining classified national security documents after leaving office and obstructing efforts to return them. A statement from Affleck and Damon read:
We had no foreknowledge of, did not consent to and do not endorse or approve any footage or audio from Air being repurposed by the Trump campaign as a political advertisement or for any other use.
Meryl Streep
During her lifetime achievement award speech at the 2017 Gold Globes, Meryl Streep tipped into then-president Donald Trump, stating:
There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good, there was nothing good about it, but it was effective and it did its job. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.
Alec Baldwin
There's no love lost between Alec Baldwin and Donald Trump, two guys who are about as close to mortal enemies as you can get in this day and age. Baldwin played a less than kind version of Trump on SNL on and off between 2016 and 2020, while the former president spent those years tweeting vile things about Baldwin. Following Baldwin's tragic accident on the set of Rust Trump said:
He’s a cuckoo-bird. He’s a nutjob. And usually, when there’s somebody like that, you know, in my opinion, he had something to do with it.
While speaking with George Stephanopoulos, Baldwin responded:
I thought to myself, just when you think that things can’t get more surreal, here’s the former president of the United States making a comment on this tragic situation.
Baldwin's definitely not voting red in 2024.
Stephen Colbert
In response to the former president's announcement that he's running for the highest office in 2024, Stephen Colbert joked:
[Trump’s speech] was such a lame event, even his family didn’t show... Start to finish, this announcement was a pathetic, drowsy word shamble toward Snoozeville. He didn’t ride a single escalator, and during what little I watched, I thought: I have never seen anything sadder in my life.
Jimmy Kimmel
Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has frequently criticized Donald Trump. Kimmel has referred to Trump as the "dumbest criminal in the world" and expressed his belief that Trump is a "profoundly stupid person." Kimmel stated:
He does not have the best words. He is not a stable genius. That mental competency test he’s always bragging that he passed? This is something the average 7-year-old could pass.
Lena Dunham
When Lena Dunham (star and creator of HBO's Girls) appeared on Howard Stern's SiriusXM talk show in 2017 she explained that the then-on going Trump presidency was so triggering that it made her lose weight. She explained:
Donald Trump became president and I stopped being able to eat food. Everyone’s been asking like, ‘What have you been doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Try soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness, and you, too, will lose weight.’
She continued:
[Trump] said I was a B-list actor with no mojo. … Here’s the funny thing. Of course, it’s a mistake. But we’re talking about him like he’s a person who is operating in a sane way; we’re talking about him like a person who doesn’t have a personality disorder.
Bruce Springsteen
In a 2020 interview with The Atlantic, rock star and political activist Bruce Springsteen spoke out against then-president Trump, saying:
I don’t think anybody truly knows where we’re going from here yet. It depends on too many unknowns. We don’t know where the COVID virus is going to take us. We don’t know where Black Lives Matter is going to take us right now. Do we get a real practical conversation going about race and policing and ultimately about the economic inequality that’s been a stain on our social contract? I believe that [Donald Trump] is a threat to our democracy. He simply makes any kind of reform that much harder. I don’t know if our democracy could stand another four years of his custodianship. These are all existential threats to our democracy and our American way of life.
Jack Black
While speaking about the 2022 mid-term elections with The Hill, The Super Mario Bros. Movie star went on to discuss Trump's 2024 run, stating:
He’s got to run because he’s also running away from himself and his mountain of lawsuits. If he can win again, in his mind, he’s probably thinking, ‘Oh, then that’ll erase the time that I lost. I’ll be a winner again!’ So it’ll be scary. But at the end of the day, what’s more disturbing are all the people that support him. And in a way I don’t even really think he believes all of that hate talk that he’s doing, I think he’s working the crowd and he knows how all this is going. He’s actually kind of brilliant at figuring out what people want to hear and just saying [it,] and it’s scary that people want a leader like that. I don’t see him as causing all of that hate. I see him as just using all of the hate that’s already there.
Reese Witherspoon
According to CNN, Reese Witherspoon contributed $2,500 to Senator Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign. Additionally, CBS reported that she donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016. It's doubtful that she would pull an about face and vote Trump in 2024.
George Lopez
This beloved Mexican-American stand up comedian has no love lost for former president Trump. In 2020, one of Lopez' jokes about assassinating Trump went viral and led to an investigation by the Secret Service. Aside from that, in 2016, Lopez tweeted a cartoon image of former Mexican president Vincente Fox cradling the decapitated head of the former president along with the caption "Make America Great Again." It's safe to bet that Lopez won't be changing his vote any time soon.
Paul Stanley
Paul Stanley, the lead singer of the band KISS, criticized Donald Trump in response to recently released audio recordings. These recordings captured the moment when the former President pressured Georgia's Secretary of State to discover votes that would change the outcome of the election and invalidate his loss to President-elect Joe Biden.
This is ABHORRENT. A true danger to our democracy. The issue isn’t that it WON’T work. It’s Mob Boss behavior and politicians putting party over audits, investigations, court rulings & COUNTRY in an effort to overrule the will of American voters.
Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen has been at odds with the former president from long before he was elected in 2016. The former model has been wielding her Twitter account against Trump for years, but in 2023 her tweet calling Trump a "p---- a-- b----" went viral after it was brought up during the House Republican’s hearing on Twitter.
George Clooney
George Clooney expressed concern about the possibility of Donald Trump being elected as president for a second time in 2024. Clooney described it as "scary" and shared that he personally observed questionable behavior from Trump during the time when he gained popularity through his show The Apprentice. Clooney said:
I didn’t think people would vote [in 2016] for someone who was so deeply flawed. [Trump] was the guy that came to the bars and asked me about which cocktail waitress was single, you know, that’s who he was.
Seth Meyers
In February 2023, Late Night host Seth Meyers let loose on the former president following Trump's announcement that he's running again in 2024:
It’s very weird to see Donald Trump just out there campaigning for president as if he didn’t orchestrate a coup to overthrow American democracy. It’s like a burglar who climbed through a window, set off the alarm, scrambled back out and said to himself, ‘Maybe I’ll just go ring the doorbell. They probably won’t recognize me if I take the mask off.’
John Legend
In 2022, John Legend explained that Ye's support of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election completely changed the nature of their relationship. He told CNN's David Axelrod:
We aren't friends as much as we used to be. I honestly think because we publicly disagreed on his running for office, his supporting Trump. I think it became too much for us to sustain our friendship.
Yvette Nicole Brown
In 2020, Community star Yvette Nicole Brown tweeted a statement against Trump after Lil Wayne posted a photo with the former president. Brown said:
I am so glad I love people more than my bank balance. There’s nothing a white supremacist could offer me that is worth my people or the lives of any other group of people in this country who are suffering.
Robert De Niro
At the May 20, 2023, premiere of his newest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro slammed Trump while suggesting that he's no more than a basic criminal. De Niro said:
I don't understand a lot about my character. Part of him is sincere. The other part, where he's betraying [the Osage people], there's a feeling of entitlement. It's the banality of evil. It's the thing we have to watch out for. We see it today, of course. We all know who I'm going to talk about. But I'm not going to say the name.
Mark Ruffalo
MCU star Mark Ruffalo has never been a fan of the former president so it's no surprise that he's not exactly stoked about the prospect of a second Trump presidency in 2024. When the former president was ousted from the White House in 2020, Ruffalo tweeted:
He is finally gone. The nightmare has come to its fitful end. A bunch of trump elite criminals pardoned in the shroud of night. The Golden Toilet Presidency is over. A turd is a turd no matter where it lays.
Stephen King
Stephen King knows a thing or two about horror, so it's not a shock that he wasn't a fan of Trump's run in the White House. Following a series of federal indictments against the former president in 2023, King posted:
I’ve started to believe that Donald Trump may really go to jail. God knows he deserves to.
It's safe to say that the author won't be voting for Trump.
Chelsea Handler
During an interview on Hill.TV's Rising, comedian and activist Chelsea Handler expressed that President Trump's election in 2016 not only personally affected her but also symbolized a sense of disruption for many Americans in their own lives. Handler said:
Once I could identify the culprit of my pain, which in my instance was my brother dying when I was 9 years old. Once I was able to pinpoint that, I realized so much of the anger I was holding with me for so many years was related to him and it’s not necessarily about Trump. Trump was a trigger for me … there’s another word that I never thought I’d use, but it’s a perfect word to describe it because it represented to so many people their lives becoming unhinged.
Samuel L. Jackson
In an interview with The Daily Beast in 2023, MCU star Samuel L. Jackson compared Trump and the entire GOP to segregation era racists, stating:
When I grew up in segregation, I knew which white people didn’t want to be bothered with me, and I knew how they felt about me. When I see Trump, I see the same rednecks I saw when I was growing up … [who] tried to keep me in my place. That’s what the Republican Party is to me. They’re doing it to young people, gay people. They don’t care who you are. If you’re not them, you’re the enemy.
Richard Gere
During a 2016 trip to Europe, Pretty Woman star Richard Gere absolutely went off on former president Trump:
Here’s a guy who’s obviously Mussolini. How is it possible that people would be supporting this guy? You can try to find reasons. It’s about how disillusioned they are, how afraid, how confused. [Trump] is a demagogue, a clown — but people like clarity. Here’s this guy who says, ‘I’m going to fix this problem for you. It doesn’t matter how, I’ll just take care of it’. He’s finding villains everywhere and then telling people he’ll get rid of them... We’ll get rid of the Jews, the blacks.Anyone that we perceive as a problem, we’ll get rid of. This is how it starts. Intelligent people aren’t seeing this — don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s just idiots who are backing Trump — this kind of thinking is a slippery slope.
Chris Evans
In 2020, Chris Evans claimed that the former president refused to work with him (twice!) on a political education initiative. While speaking with Jimmy Kimmel, Evans said:
We did [ask him], we had to. You’ve gotta do it. We asked him, he said no. He said no twice, and so I did my part.
Evans followed this statement by appearing at a fundraiser for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, so it's not likely that he'll be supporting Trump's second run at the White House.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
In 2017, Pulitzer-winning composer and original star of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda absolutely went off on the then-president following his response to the crisis in Puerto Rico, specifically his refusal to help after claiming that the Mayor of San Juan was being "nasty" to him. Miranda tweeted:
You're going straight to hell, @realDonaldTrump. No long lines for you. Someone will say, "Right this way, sir." They'll clear a path.
Tom Morello
When asked on Twitter if he thought that Donald Trump would run for president in 2024, Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello had this to say:
I’d be surprised if he didn’t. And I’d be surprised if he didn’t lose again and claim that he had won. I think there is a possibility that the results of that will be even worse than it was this time. He’s a sociopath; his dad thought he was such a disappointing loser that he can never publicly admit to losing.
Robert Downey Jr.
The MCU's Iron Man has never been a one party kind of guy, but in 2021 he explained why he prefers President Biden over Trump, saying:
We’ve been prone in the West over here to be very personality-based and now we’re going back to principle, and that takes a lot of discipline. I was very pleased to see our commander-in-chief say to his entire cabinet: ‘You are all to treat each other with respect from day one, or I’m gonna have a problem with you.
Leonardo DiCaprio
In 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio organized a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's campaign, where each attendee was required to donate $33,400. Out of this amount, only $2,700 went directly to Clinton's campaign, while the remainder was allocated to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). DiCaprio, known for his numerous iconic roles is not only an actor but also an environmentalist who strongly advocates for addressing climate change. During the 2016 election he implored the American people to vote "for people who believe in the science of climate change.”
Cardi B
Cardi B, a rapper and actor, has actively expressed her views on politics and social change since rising to stardom. In 2020, she strongly supported Bernie Sanders and his progressive policies during his campaign. She also engaged in a conversation with Joe Biden, the now-president, in Elle magazine. Their discussion covered important topics such as education, police brutality, and systemic racism.
George Takei
George Takei has made a commitment to support the election of Joe Biden and frequently expresses his criticisms of President Trump and other Republicans through his influential social media presence. As a Star Trek actor with a personal history of being interned in a Japanese camp during World War II, Takei strongly condemns the treatment of immigrants in the United States based on his own experiences.
Wanda Sykes
While speaking with Variety in 2023, Wanda Sykes touched on the 2024 election and when asked about Trump could make it to the White House again she had this to say:
I don’t see how. I mean, there are definitely pockets that he’s going to dominate, but I don’t see across the country how he’ll get the nomination. Right? Are we that bad? Is the country that horrible? Really?
